Kyle Penniston of Homestead, Florida, nabbed the new record Monday for the South Florida Water Management District's Python Elimination Program after catching the 120-pound snake measuring 17 feet, 5 inches. That's nearly as tall as a two-story building.

His hands were swollen from the female snake’s bites as he wrestled her.

“She started wrapping me while I tried getting her up the levee,” according to Penniston’s Facebook post. He lost his grip then reached out for his pistol that jammed.

Burmese pythons have been devastating local wildlife in the Everglades, so Florida has been paying a select group of hunters to catch and kill the invasive snakes. On Tuesday, the 1,000th python was brought in, measuring over 11 feet long. (May 22)
AP

“I kept fighting till we were both dead of energy,” he said.

Penniston is professional python hunter who is part of the water management district's program to curtail the invasive species in Collier, Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties.

Hunters can receive bonuses depending on the size of the snakes.

Burmese pythons — which are native to India, southeast Asia and the East Indies — have been reported in the Everglades and other parts of South Florida since the 1980s. Pet owners who did not want to keep the rapidly growing reptiles may have released them, and additional snakes may have escaped from a breeding facility destroyed during Hurricane Andrew, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Their young are so large when they hatch that they have few predators, according to the University of Florida. The snakes, which are among the largest on the planet, are sexually mature at age 3 to 4 and lay about 40 eggs every two years.

They eat wild mammals and birds, even some alligators, and also prey on cats and dogs. They're comfortable swimming in water and hanging in trees, and researchers are worried that they're headed next to the Florida Keys where several species of mammals and birds are on the federal endangered list.

Burmese pythons can grow to 20 feet and have the girth of a telephone pole. The longest burmese python in captivity measured 18 feet at her death and more than 400 pounds, according to the Chicago Herpetological Society.

Python hunters have now killed 1,859 of the invaders, stretching a combined length of more than two miles and collectively weighing more than 11 tons, according to South Florida Water Management District. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission also manages a program to fight against the species.

Two petri dishes with bobcat claws and a fawn hoof found in the stomach of a python sit on display during a python autopsy at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida on Thursday, April 5, 2018. Olivia Vanni/Naples Daily News